


To the Victor Go the Spoils

by beaubete



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 16:22:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2031729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubete/pseuds/beaubete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q and Eve make a bet, because Bond's a sure thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this one started because I really wanted to address the way romance is written in our society, even within my own fics. I had a lot of fun writing the parts between Eve and Q--this story is as much about their friendship as it is about the relationship between Bond and Q; more, in many ways. 
> 
> Please be aware that there is some casual offensive language in this fic (misogyny, homophobia, slut-shaming) that is used affectionately. Its use is fairly mild, but if that bothers you, please give this one a miss. It's been beta read by the fantastic 3littleowls, but has not been Britpicked because I'm impatient; if I've made any mistakes on that front, please feel free to let me know.

She’s on her knees like a pro, teasing, taunting words falling from her lips.  He can’t hear her—the CCTVs in this area don’t cover sound—but he can imagine what she’s saying, imagine the porn star dialogue and the filthy words that always seem to work on men like this one.  Eve gives the man a lingering look that would say passion if it weren’t for the wink she throws the camera before sinking onto the man’s cock as if cocksucking were her calling.  Q rolls his eyes and keeps watching.

It’s one of the many, many reasons he’s glad he’s not an agent: sooner or later, the line between agent and provocateur seems to blend, and every agent eventually ends up on their knees.  Q knows—he’s watched them all, from the lowest field agent to the most fearsome of the Double-ohs to the secretary to the head of Section Six, it seems inevitable that they should end up performing for the crown.  His own loyalty is a potent thing—he’s lost friends, lovers, any semblance of a personal life to his job and not looked back, not even blinked, really, as they all faded away—but even he can’t imagine having sex with a stranger for a mission.

He knows the tricks.  Eve’s told him: it’s oral when you want it over quick, anal when you don’t think you’ll be able to maintain character long enough to make it through, hand jobs when you think they want to get rough.  It sounds so Soho, honestly, and Q had wrinkled his nose delicately at the thought that all she was missing was a list of prices.

“How?” he’d asked.

“You just do.  It’s necessary,” she’d said with a little shrug.

No, Q’s glad he’s not a field agent.  On the screen, Eve’s head is still bobbing dutifully; the man curls his fingers in her hair and uses it to gain leverage, fucking hard into her mouth until her fingers are curling on his hips and Q wonders if he’s going to have to trigger a fire alarm nearby just so she can draw a breath.  Instead, she’s turning, pivoting her weight and dropping until she can flip the man, rolling him to the ground before deftly applying a thumb to his throat; he’s dead within seconds without ever really struggling, his cock a wet, flopping, pink worm along the length of his thigh.  She’s let him come before killing him.  Q shivers.

“Alright there, Agent Moneypenny?” he asks through the comm system.  She turns to the camera again and grins, wiping at the corner of her mouth.

“Did you think I couldn’t handle him?” she asks on the mic, and no, by now he’s learned not to underestimate her, though mostly because she keeps reminding him.  Even acting as a honeytrap, she’s one of the most dangerous agents he knows.

“Did you want an escort home tonight, Agent Moneypenny?” he asks, because the least he can do after she’s been sucking cock for the freedom of the Western world is make sure she’s not jumped by a mugger on her way back to the hotel before she has a chance to make it home to England.

“No, thank you.  I imagine I’m going to pop off to the pub, wash my mouth out with a tequila.”

“Unpleasant flavour?”

“That’s one word for it.”

“We thank you for your service, Agent Moneypenny.  Please report back to HQ by oh-eight-hundred to receive further instructions for your return to England.”  And then, even though he shouldn’t—“Go ahead and have a pint on England.  You deserve it.”  He’ll adjust her expense account as necessary, but if it doesn’t exist to buy agents liquor after having their mouths violated in the name of the state, he’s not quite sure what it’s for.

“You’re a peach, Q,” she quips back at him, and then her earwig goes dead.  He listens for a while longer, shuffles his papers around, and thinks.  Somewhere near two in the morning, when Q is just about to turn off the monitoring system, he hears it blip on, jostled by Moneypenny’s movements, judging by the moans and sighs it picks up.  It’s off again within seconds, and Q settles in for a long evening.  He’ll never leave an agent out there alone, and he carries the wireless headset with him to his office and the couch there.  Perhaps he can catch a few hours’ light doze before she checks in again.

Eve is home two days later, and Q makes no secret of his fondness when she enters the branch.   Her lipstick is sticky, waxy, and fragrant when she busses his cheek.  

“How was sunny Beirut?” he asks, drawing away to inventory her tech.  It’s all there, of course, which should be proof enough to agents like Bond that it can be done, no matter Bond’s plethora of excuses and whys and why nots.

She shrugs.  “‘Bout the same as England, I suppose.”

“Except for the sun, the tropical heat, the swarthy, tanned gentlemen—” he guides.

“Why, Q!  A lady never kisses and tells!” she scolds, scandalised.

“Moneypenny, I’ve read the Duchess’s autobiography—borrowed from you, as a matter of fact—and she actually is a Lady.  Now spill the gory details or I won’t tell you about my nights in Vauxhall anymore.”

“Trick question!  Your so-called ‘nights in Vauxhall’ are all on this side of the bridge.  No deal,” she says, grinning.

“I’ve been out!” he protests, but truth be told, he can’t quite remember when, and he knows that whenever it was, he’d rushed to tell her after, as always.

“Not since Bonfire Night, at least, and that was ages ago.  I swear, you’re the saddest, loneliest nancy I’ve ever met.”  She shakes her head ruefully.  “Cock and balls are utterly wasted on you.  If only I could borrow them off you it’d be fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck, all the time.  I’d be over the bridge without a care, and all those pretty boys might actually be interested in coming home with me.”

“Some fucking lady!” Q bursts out with laughter.  “Dish, you tramp.”

But Eve shrugs again, deflecting.  “He was nobody, darling.  I don’t even recall what he looked like, really.  Tall.  Broadish.  Skin like Nairobi in summer, but that’s really all there is to say about him.”

“Don’t you even have a name to go with my faceless fantasies?”

Eve shrugs a third time, hapless.  “Don’t think I ever got it, honestly.  It was more of a ‘wham-bam-on-your-knees-sir-thank-you-sir’ kind of affair.”

“You slag.”  Q’s voice is breathless with wonder.  “Oh, to be a pretty girl!”

Eve flicks his ear affectionately.  “Not doing too bad for yourself, boffin.”

“There’s a white party next weekend, but how do I ask the international terrorists to take the days off so I can go meet boys?” he tells her despondently.  

“Get shagged against the back wall at Milk, you mean,” she corrects, and he shoots her a dirty look, even though he knows which story she’s referring to.  It’s been—he sighs to himself; has it really been two years?  Suddenly, he feels very lonely.

“I do need a proper seeing-to, though,” he agrees soberly, then gives a brisk clap of his hands.  “Well!  That’s enough of my pathetic love life—”

“—or lack thereof,” Eve adds for him.  Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and the sweet smile she gives his glare promises pain if he retaliates.  He settles for a glare.

“Don’t you have to go check in with Mallory?” he asks instead.

The dirty look that crawls over her face at that is comfortable, even if only because he knows it’s not aimed at him.  Within seconds she’s ranting, distracted from her teasing as she snarls over being bid across the world like a peon.  He knows better than to think she’s forgotten—this conversation will pop up again soon, he knows, and in the least-expected place, he’s sure—but for now he can nod in commiseration as she rants her way from one side of his office to the other.  For all their teasing and gossip, it’s moments like these that are why they’re such good friends; she’s listened to his griping about Double-oh Seven often enough, and he knows how comforting it is to have someone just listen.  

Eventually, she has to go or else Mallory will send Tanner down to fetch her.  She’s much calmer now, at least, as he walks her to the door of his office.   

“Goodbye, darling.  Have a nice day at work,” he tells her, angling his cheek up for a kiss.  

She grants it, stepping back.  “You’d better have supper ready for me at the end of my long, hard day, though.  No sitting on the couch watching telly and eating bonbons, my sweet.”

“Of course not,” he denies, offended.  “Can you imagine the outcry if this arse got fat?”

“-ter?” she prompts innocently.

“Cow.”

“Beanpole.”  She slicks his hair back from his forehead with an affectionate thumb.  “I do want to see you meet someone, though.  You’re turning into a mole man down here in the basement.”

“Find me time to meet someone and I’ll do it,” he tells her.

“And not just a random hookup in the loo at a club?”

“I thought the point of this exercise was for me to get off?”

She sighs, smiling fondly.  “Of course.  But everyone knows you don’t get to do the really fun stuff until the third go, so try at a relationship, won’t you, doll?”

“For you, Miss Moneypenny,” he agrees, even though they both know he won’t do anything of the sort.  

Oh, yes, he may go out this weekend—one of the glorious things about a white party is they’re twenty-four hours, and whenever he shows up he’s sure to find a fit guy to grind his scrawny arse on—but come Monday he’ll be back to reality, buttoned down and zipped up and an Agent of the Empire again.  

Eve kisses his forehead and lets his fringe flop over the mark with a sad smile.  “Have fun.”

“Always.”

It doesn’t happen.  Of course it doesn’t happen, and Q casts a longing look to the queues and crowds huddling around the steaming doors of clubs and pubs as he heads into work.  He’s got an outfit tucked away in the bottom of his satchel for a wishful day, stark white trousers and a mesh shirt that makes him look almost tanned, but instead of Q getting off in the darkened halls of a gay club, it’s Bond who’s getting off, and with the barely-legal daughter of a cartel lord who wouldn’t just shoot Bond if he caught him but castrate him, as well.  Q watches Bond go at it with all the tenacity of a straight man trying to impress a woman—he’s been eating pussy for what seems like hours.

“If you would, Double-oh Seven,” Q asks.  “I do think her father will be back soon.”

The girl’s too far gone to notice the two-fingered salute Bond gives her teddy bear and its nanny-cam left eye, but Q’s not amused, especially when Bond drops his face into her lap again and makes a point of audibly enjoying her flavour.  Q contemplates for a moment whether or not he can set off the sprinklers without the entire alarm system going as well, but Maria Therese is playing her cards close to her chest, and if the choked, bitten-off moans she’s making are anything to judge by, Q finds he can’t really blame her.  Bond seems to be exceptionally good at giving head.  

“Shall I check in again when you’ve finished, then, Bond?” Q asks, and it’s hard to keep his tone from being waspish when he’s listening to someone have the best sex of her young life instead of getting his own.  

“Fucking hell, Q,” Bond mumbles into her thigh, and Q doesn’t know what she thinks he’s just said but he does know he regrets the tie pin camera.  

“I’ll give you ten minutes.”

In the end, Bond makes it last twenty-five, just because he can, and what’s Q going to do about it, aside from write a note in his after-action report?  Q listens to the sucking slurps, hears the girl’s groans, sees Bond give her her first brush with anal by a discreet finger, and when she comes there’s a spurt of fluid that has Q recoiling from the screen as if it was going to land on him.  Bond’s voice is smug, satisfied until she tells him he’s missed his meeting by half an hour—and Q can’t help but feel vindicated that if Bond had only quit fucking around, literally, when Q had told him to, he’d have saved himself a lot of trouble.  

Then it’s par for the course for one of Bond’s missions: running and jumping and shooting and shouting, until Q is exhausted, all daydreams of going to the club after work long-since wafted away like wisps of smoke, ephemeral and forgotten.  He slumps at his desk and curses Bond’s name, then thinks of that girl’s satisfaction and burns with jealousy.

His head’s still buried in his arms when he feels Moneypenny’s nails gentle on his scalp.  Popping his head up, he blinks at her, aware he must have fallen asleep at some unholy hour of the early morning; when he turns hopeful eyes at her, she shakes her head sadly.  “Lunchtime Monday,” she tells him, and he drops his head with a disappointed groan.

“I hate James Bond and his stupid, perfect arse,” he whines, and Eve makes soothing tutting sounds as she pets his curls into raucous piles.  It’s going to take a comb, a static sheet, probably mousse, and a wish and a prayer to right it again, but he can’t bring himself to be bitter because it’s the most human contact he’s had in ages.  “How dare he get to fuck someone while I’m stuck here going on dates with my palm, and even then only when he’s not actively fucking someone on a mission?”

“Just lucky, I guess,” she tells him, still stroking his head.

“He made her come, like, four times.  That’s not fair.  Why should some girl get four orgasms when I don’t even get one?”

“And then he shot her dad in the face,” she reminds him, not ungently.

“And then he shot her dad in the face,” Q acknowledges.  “But everything before that part must have been quite nice.  It sounded so, at least.”

“You could always ask him to make you come four times, of course.  That’d solve your frustration, I’m sure.”

“Because he’d kill me.”

“With orgasms?” Eve posits thoughtfully.

“With bullets.  Or possibly his bare hands.”

“Aren’t you into choking, though?”  And Q has a brief flashback to Paulo and his massive hands that left him trembling and bruised in all the best ways.  He’s sure his flush can be seen from Mars.  “You little tart,” Eve concludes, eyeing him up as he squirms.

“But it wouldn’t be the fun kind of choking,” Q complains, and even though he’s joking, playing along, he wishes she’d stop.  Because he wouldn’t—Bond wouldn’t choke him, wouldn’t shoot him.  No, he’d kill Q in the worst way: he’d never talk to him again.  Q can feel his smile waver as he considers it, what Bond’s honest reaction to a proposition from Q would be.  Laughter, no doubt, amusement at Q’s temerity, and when he realised how much Q actually meant it he’d go cold, remote.  There’d be a professional distance, no more of the hidden smiles that light Q’s days from within, no more gentle, brushing hands when he offers Bond his tech.  Q’s skin goes cold—there’d be no more “Quartermaster”s murmured dark and silky into the earpiece and no more shattered “just talk to me”s at the end of the bad missions.  If Bond knew, if he even suspected—

“Earth to Q.  Come in, Q.  The aliens have taken over the boffin and spirited him off to Lala Land, haven’t they?”  Q grins, but it’s a pale imitation.  Eve’s fingers are gentle as they stroke through his hair.  “Fantasising?  Bond is well fit.”

“And straight.  There’s no way I’m hot enough to be his exception,” Q grouses.

“Oh, hardly.  He does boys, too, you know.”

“Liar!”  They’re back on familiar ground, skimming away from the edges of his black hole of a crush and back into ridiculous gossip.  “You’ll get my hopes up.”

“Scout’s honor.”

“What kind of scouts would let you in?”

“Girl Guides!  Got my merit badge in punching people without damaging my manicure.  Also in preparing custard, of all things—no purple tins in my cupboard.”

“Ooh, can you do chocolate?” Q asks, temporarily derailed.

“Only ever managed one flavour: egg.”

“Ick.”

“All the better; you’d go wide if I could do a chocolate, wouldn’t you?” she asks, and Q hums in agreement.  “You shouldn’t sell yourself short,” she tells him seriously, and for a moment, he doesn’t know what she’s talking about.  “You’re cute.  I’d do you if I had the parts you need to get the machinery working.”

“I’ve heard tell there’s plastic for that,” he quips, and both of them take a moment to shudder at the thought of sex together—like fucking a sibling, really.

“I’m serious, boffin.  He’d be a lucky man to have you.  Any man would.”

“He’d have to fight his way to the front of the queue, then, wouldn’t he?”

“When you go to Marks, do you trust the bottles at the front to be the best wine?” she asks gently.

“I don’t buy my wine at the supermarket.  I’m not a pleb.”

“Liar.  I’ve seen a bottle of Tesco’s finest in your cupboard.”

“At least it’s not Asda?” he says hopefully.  Eve looks unimpressed.  “I’m not a pleb, I’m a drunk.”

“At Tesco, is the one in the front the best?”

“No, ‘cause the employees don’t give a shit.  The good ones are always shoved to the back.”

“And if you didn’t know there were good ones in the back, would you leave with one of the bad ones?”

“We’ve established I’m a drunk, yes.”

Eve laughs, ruffling his hair.  “You’re like a grand old bottle of shiraz in the far back of the shelf.  You’ve been there so long no one knows you’re there, and you’re scared of being bought so you just squirm your way back until all the cheap, awful stuff is bought up first, then complain that no one’s popping your cork.”

He knows what she’s saying.  He does, and he can even see the merit in it.  “But a whisky connoisseur like Bond’s not going to be interested in a bottle of wine, no matter how nice it is,” he protests.  “He wants his whisky 18 years old and mixed with a little coke.”

“Hah,” says Eve.

“My point is—”

“And my point is you’ll never know until you ask—”

“Ask, ‘Bond, would you let me suck your cock in exchange for wanking at your feet?’?  Because that’ll do wonders for my self-esteem.”

“—if he wants to give it a go sometime.  Take him to a boring film and blow his mind in the back row.”

“Don’t write me into your pornographic fantasies.”

“Take him out to dinner then back to yours.”

“I thought you wanted Bond.  You’ve waxed poetic about his chest often enough,” Q protests.  The conversation is making him feel a bit weak, nauseated and shy.

“Almost as often as you have his arse.”  She has a point.  He smiles thinly.  “Would it help if you had a deadline?” she asks, and what?

“Deadline?”

“We’ll both have a go of it, and whoever gets there first gets the prize.”

Q pulls a face.  “Don’t let him hear you call it a prize.  He already thinks it’s God’s gift to women and he’s just doing his level best to make sure they all get a turn.”

“Q.”  She’s serious.  Good lord, she’s serious.  

“I—”  He can’t form words, just lets his mouth flap empty.

“Say yes.  Say you’ll finally do something about this ache in your loins; we’ll both work him out of our systems.”  Eve looks especially beautiful here in his office at noon on a Monday, her hair artfully curled and coiffed and her lipstick shellacked to a mirror sheen.  Her eyelashes could cut someone, and he’s going to cry when he finds out she’s fucked the object of his wank fantasies of the last two years.  This is a horrible, stupid idea and it’s going to hurt quite a lot.

“Yes.”

::

“You,” Q tells Bond succinctly, “have arms.”  He realises the moment it comes out of his mouth that it’s not what he wanted to say, not by a long shot.  It’s actually so far from what he wanted to say that he may as well have randomly spoken in Farsi, a sentiment Bond seems to share when he looks up at Q from where he’s working the grit out of his Walther’s slide catch with a thumbnail.

“Yes?” Bond agrees tentatively.  “Most people do.  Those who haven’t had their habitual maiming, that is.  Missed my appointment for that, you see—maybe next year.”

“Nice ones, I meant,” Q corrects, and wonders why God doesn’t strike him dead.

Bond blinks at him, startled.  It’s the third time Q’s said something insipid today, and he’s starting to get used to the taste of shoe leather.  Bond is careful when he places the gun on the desk.  “Q, are you trying to say something?”

“Practicing!” Q blurts, the first answer he can think of.  Even as he says it he knows it makes him sound like an arsehole, but he can’t stop himself: “There’s someone that I fancy, but I’m an absolute tit when I’m around him.  I mean that I can’t flirt.  At all.  I figured I’d give you a go—give it a go with you—try you on—There’s no way to make that not sound like a come-on, is there?” he asks lamely.

“Especially since you were coming on to me,” Bond agrees.  “So you’re flirting because I’m easy.”

Q nearly swallows his tongue.  His eyebrows are trying to crawl into one being in the center of his face, and he lets them contort until Bond is laughing, bright and strong.  “What?” Q manages, and only barely.

“You look like you just shat yourself.  God, you really are horrible at this,” Bond tells him.

Q waits for the ‘but’.  It doesn’t come.  When he forces his eyes to meet Bond’s, Bond is still grinning, still glowing with laughter, and Q feels the sharp, agonizing pull of humiliation, rusted fish hooks melded to his flesh dragging his guts out through his navel in a horrorshow that’s half fascinating and half the most mortifyingly painful thing that’s ever happened to him.  It burns up his arms in quick-cool tingles that leave his fingers shaking and his skin oversensitive, each brush of his sleeves over the peaky hairs on his arms like sandpaper on an open wound.  He forces himself to smile weakly, all but drags the corner of his mouth up with a finger when the muscles of his lips refuse to cooperate.  

“That’s why I need practice,” he acknowledges quietly, and before Bond has a chance to realise how deeply his laughter has scored, Q sweeps the dirty gun and the distress signal up into his hands, already headed to his office.  “Thank you, Double-oh Seven; that will be all.”

He pretends he’s not hiding on the other side of the door when he hears Bond approach after he’s shut it between them.  The glass walls of his office are frosted for privacy so no one can see him leaning against the cool wood of the door with his head in his hands.  Bond stops just on the other side and Q listens for the knock, the discreet apology, but what he hears instead is the agent walking away.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter does touch on some sensitive issues RE: underaged sex (the characters participating in on-screen activity are of legal age of consent in the UK, though one is not legal within her own country) and a dub-con scene. Please proceed with caution if this is potentially an issue for you.

He doesn’t tell Eve—how could he?—so there’s no excuse for the sharp pain that tucks itself under his ribcage when he sees them eating lunch together.  She’s got her fingers on Bond’s arm, groping, and in seconds she’s gotten miles farther than Q knows that he’s ever going to get.  She laughs and Bond laughs with her, and Q takes the high road because it’s the only thing he can do: he pretends he hasn’t noticed that his lunch partner has a different companion, pretends he hasn’t seen them at all, and passes right by.  But he’s not noble, he’s a jealous little twat, and he makes sure to sit on the other side of the partition, close enough to hear every word, though they tear at him.

“God, why you need a weapon, I’ll never understand,” Eve is cooing, and Q knows she’s running her palms along the sleek muscles he’d so awkwardly admired the day before.  “Q swears you don’t shoot your guns, you just throw them at the enemy and hope for the best.  I can see why—these things are deadly.”

“Are they that nice?” Bond asks, and it’s the low rumble of amusement in his voice that sends chills chasing up and down Q’s spine, arousal and embarrassment shoving at each other like puppies for more of that wry tone.  Bond’s thinking of his tongue-tied appreciation, he’s sure, and Q lets his hands knot into fists, though he doesn’t know who he’d punch.  Himself, for being an idiot, perhaps.  He knows what Eve’s doing; he’s heard her describe her technique before: she’ll guide Bond with a touch, get him used to her in his space, tease him into action with her words, flirt lip and tongue like casting her reel, then hook him in with her body.  He knows even now she’s got her shoe off, left her stiletto on the floor as she slides her stockinged toes up the length of his calf.  No higher—she’s not a complete slag and they’re in the canteen, after all—but enough to taunt, enough to make Bond wonder.  Enough to make him want.

His stomach is in knots.  His food sits on his tray, untouched, and he can’t concentrate on what she’s saying, just the low, sexy burr of her voice and the thick, drumming buzz of his amused responses.  They make a handsome pair.  The sight of his tuna salad turns his stomach, raises his gorge until he can’t bear to have it in front of him anymore.  He dumps the tray and stalks out, but he can’t resist the glance back; Bond’s watching him.

::

Bond’s in Somalia this time, his hands on a girl whose family will stone her if they catch them together.  She’s sweet, almost wholly innocent, and it makes Q sick, what the agents do in the name of the Crown.  Bond whispers to her, tells her how beautiful she is, how soft her dark skin, how sweet the taste of her arousal is.  He’s using his mouth again, Q can hear, wet and slick and hungry.  The girl is crying because Bond has promised her a seat on the next plane out, but he hasn’t told her what she has to look forward to in England: a lifetime cleaning houses, scrubbing windows, picking up after tourists.  Instead, Bond paints her a beautiful picture, loves her body tenderly, makes her cry and shake underneath him.  

Fatima.  Fatima.  It’s a lovely name, and Bond whispers it like it’s a prayer; Q can hear the moment she’s penetrated for the first time.  It makes him want to vomit.  Fatima doesn’t cry, just whimpers once, and it’s Bond’s shaking breath that tells him he’s done it, the soft, ragged sigh he draws from her the first time he presses in.  Q could scream—how could Bond be so cruel?  But it’s necessary; he’ll have to pass her off as his child bride, the white colonial ass who’s come to rape and pillage and steal a black baby for his own.  It’s the only way to get her on the plane.  They’ll check, those disgusting—Q sucks in a breath to calm himself.  If she’s untouched, she’ll go back to her family, and she might as well have birthed a thousand snakes  if that happens.  She won’t survive.  Bond is literally fucking her to save her life.

He’s tender about it, gentler than Q had imagined he’d be.  He can hear Bond shuffling her closer, can hear the way he shushes her whimpers, the way he touches her, stirs her to an orgasm she’s got no context for.  He’s ginger.  When she’s come, she leans against Bond’s chest, and Q knows because he can hear her tears pressed muffled to the microphone in Bond’s collar point.  She falls asleep there, soft whuffling breaths lulled and sweet.

“Q?” Bond asks, quiet.  Q doesn’t respond, just listens to the girl sleep.  “Q?”  A sigh; the earwig goes silent.

She doesn’t make it.  They never do.

::

It feels petty to be licking his wounds in his office, but Bond hadn’t even looked twice at him when he’d dropped off his gun; the parts of his radio had been wrapped in a bloodstained scrap of what Q eventually realises is a hijab, which sets his skin crawling.  He’d stared at the fabric and felt Bond’s eyes on him, and they’d each of them waited for the other to respond, to break this horrific silence.  Neither of them had, and Bond had gone without another word, leaving Q incredibly guilty and heartsore.  He’s got the scrap on his desk, only resisting the urge to fiddle with it by toying with a pen between restless fingers; even so, he doesn’t hear Eve enter until she’s sitting on his desk, frowning at him.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know that.”

“It wasn’t his, either.”

He knows that, too.  He looks up, eyes bleak, and tries to convey to her what he’s feeling, what this guilt sitting in his chest means.  “He hates me,” he says instead, and somehow it says everything.  It says enough.  Eve stands, walking around the edge of the desk to wrap his head in her arms.  The weight of her breasts is warm and heavy against his neck, a familiar pressure that has nothing to do with the thought of girls dying in the harsh baked heat of the African sun because.  Not because they’d failed the check, no—he’d listened with distaste as they’d poked and prodded her fresh-torn hymen before declaring her properly wed—but because she’d been caught in the inevitable end-of-mission firefight that always seems to happen around Double-oh Seven.  She’d been so close to making it out, and instead she was left behind.  Q hopes her family found her, hopes they didn’t, hopes they never see what she did to try to get away.

“He doesn’t,” Eve says gently.

“He does.  It’s okay—I hate me, too.”

It’s a child mission, even though she’d been over the age of consent in Britain.  In her own world, she’d been a child, her father’s property transferred to Bond because there are still some people in the world who haven’t yet realised what a horrible idea that is.  Her hijab is on Q’s desk; no one can fault him for being upset.  It’s a fucking child mission, and the child is dead.  Eve strokes his head.

“This fucking bet is ridiculous,” Q snaps, shoving the bloody fabric over the edge of his desk with the pen.  He regrets it the moment he does it, but Eve just picks it up again, carefully placing it on the blotter.  “Go ahead and fuck him.  I don’t care.”

“Q.”  Her voice is stern.  He doesn’t look at her.  She sighs, carefully folding the hijab into her handkerchief; it’ll go into the case file the way things like this always do, one more cardboard box of atrocities in the room of MI:6’s sins.  Eve gentles.  “Q.”  He looks at her long red nails as they tap on his desk.  “Give him time.  He’s hurting right now—listen!—he’s hurting right now, but he won’t always be.  Give him time, and he’ll find you.”

“He’ll find you,” Q says stubbornly, and he feels like a child, petulant and argumentative.  He bites his lip.  “It was a ridiculous bet, though.  We shouldn’t have—”

“You want to end it?” she asks.  There’s no censure in the words, no judgement, just quiet affection.  He considers saying yes, thinks about what will happen if he does, the way they’ll both keep dancing around their attraction to Bond, the way she’ll never take that step toward him if Q doesn’t play the game, the way she’ll always defer to him and the way he’ll always defer to her and the way neither of them will ever get to see if Bond’s as good in bed as legend from Medical has it.

“No,” he tells her, curling his fingers around her hand.  If he doesn’t play, if she thinks he’s still trying, she’ll get what she wants.  The thought of Bond with someone else, even Moneypenny, burns at his skin, but this is what’s right: he shakes his head as if clearing the cobwebs.  “No, just thinking out loud.”  Eve presses a kiss to his curls and heads out.

::

“I’m sorry.”  It’s the first thing he says to Bond the next time he sees him.  He says it quietly, sincerely, and Bond’s smile is small but genuine.

“Don’t even think on it.  I was wrong to be angry with you,” Bond tells him.  

“You shouldn’t apologise for being angry,” Q says.  “I was angry.”

“We were both angry, and neither of us angry at each other,” Bond agrees.  “But I’m sorry I took it out on you.”

The flush that creeps up Q’s cheeks at that is warm, insidious and clinging to his skin like a sunburn.  Bond touches his cheek, brushes the edge of the stubble that’s come up, and Q’s flush goes deeper, darker.  Bond grins.  “That’s new,” he remarks, touching Q’s skin through the dark hair again.  “Adds at least ten years.  I’d sell you a drink now.  Or take you for one.”

Q freezes; he’s got no idea what he’s supposed to say to that.  His eyes meet Bond’s like a deer in the path of an oncoming car, and Bond’s smile sideswipes him just the same, throws him off the path and into the murky woods mangled and bleeding.  His jaw clicks as he works it, but he can’t find the words to say anything, doesn’t know what he’d try to say anyway.  

“Q.  Cat got your tongue?” Bond teases gently, and it’s all Q can think—I’m an absolute tit when I’m around him—until Bond releases his jaw with a quiet, amused huff.  “Better take it back again.  You might need it.”

“Uh.  Yeah,” Q replies, then curses himself for sounding like an idiot.  He’s a damned fool; he could not possibly fuck this up any faster if he were trying, but he’s not.  Not trying to make a complete ass of himself, certainly not, but not even trying to coax Bond in since he’d given him over to Eve.  Bond doesn’t seem to have got the memo.

He’s over the moon for the rest of the day, skating high on the feeling of being attractive enough to have caught Bond’s attention.  It’s been a long day; he hasn’t been able to catch up with Eve at all, but finally, finally as the bells at Westminster ring the long hour of eleven—he stops to count, always has.  It’s comforting, counting out each booming ring in the distance—he’s ready to make his escape for the day.  It’s late, and the theatre crowds will be letting out.  The pubs are just beginning to roar, but he finds he doesn’t really want to go out.  Perhaps Eve will acquiesce to sitting in his dingy flat with a bottle of cheap wine and take away from the chippy on the corner—she likes their curry, bland and flavourless gravy that it is—and he takes the steps two at a time to meet her at her office.  She’ll still be there, he knows, because she hasn’t stopped by to collect him yet—he hasn’t yet had a chance to brag.

And she is in her office when he gets there, eyes flashing laughter as Bond teases her.  He’s going out on another mission in the morning, but for now.  For now, Q’s gut sinks, because he’s looking down the front of Eve’s dress, tugging the shell of sleek silk away from her collarbone until he can peer down the structured shape of it at her breasts, and it’s playful, teasing—Q knows she’d smack him if it weren’t welcome—but that makes it worse.  Bond doesn’t look particularly repentant when he walks in, and the flush of victory goes, just leaves completely to be replaced with a feeling like sick misery.  It doesn’t help that Eve flashes him a smirk of triumph behind Bond’s back, and Q has to force himself to smile.

“So Bruges in the morning, eh, Bond?” he says, and he’s proud that it doesn’t sound like a bruise on his lips, for all he tastes the injured blood of it on his tongue.  Bond shrugs eloquently, one shoulder raising and falling as if it really doesn’t matter where he’ll be.  Q supposes it doesn’t.  “Just coming to wish you a happy evening on my way out, dear,” he offers Eve, and she lives up to her best friend status by immediately noticing something is wrong.  Her frown is subtle, but Bond glances between them and sighs, standing from his seat on the edge of her desk to pull on his outer jacket.

“Moneypenny,” Bond says, bussing her cheek affectionately.  “Quartermaster.”  The title is cold, formal, but his hand is not; Bond clutches at his shoulder as he passes, and even through the weight of his cardigan Q can feel the heat of Bond’s hand on him.  He shivers, tipping his head to watch Bond as he goes, at least until he catches the reflection of Bond’s face in the glass in the door—he’s been watching Q blatantly watch his arse, and Q’s face goes a vivid red when Bond’s eyes wrinkle around a smile.  He’s absolutely been caught, and now Q’s confused: is it Eve Bond wants, admiring her body and touching her in ways that would land all three of them in Human Resources under Tanner’s disapproving eye? or is it Q he encourages, touches gentle and guiding until Q can feel the longing building up to spill over in the form of flushed cheeks and eyes hot enough to melt?

Or the third option: Bond flirts with everyone, and Q is merely reading too much into it, wishful thinking and a hungry lust building mountains out of molehills as he tries to superimpose his own landscape over things that are not there.  Eve is watching him carefully when he turns back to her.

“He’s got a nice arse, doesn’t he?” she asks—of course she’d seen him caught.  He flushes deeper.

“He nearly had two handfuls when I walked in,” he tells her, charmed by the way she remembers herself, tugging her neckline back into place until its demure hem reveals nothing more than the elegant lines of her collarbone and throat.  “I think you’re winning,” Q tells her, but she just shakes her head.

“May have to share the prize with you, honestly.  There’s enough sugar in it that trying to keep it to myself would give me a stomach ache,” she says, laughing.

“Really?” he asks, turning to regard the frosted door wistfully, recalling the laugh he’d seen on Bond’s face.  “Must be greedy, then—I’d take the whole thing in two bites and wish I’d savoured it.”

“Gagging for it,” Eve teases.

“Ravenous.”  The word hangs in the air between them, heavy and unexpectedly erotic, until he turns to her again with a grin.  “Speaking of—O’Leary’s, a shit film, and that bottle of booze you made fun of me for the other day?”

“Sounds like a holiday.”

They end up piled together on his couch watching something American on late-late night telly, not even bothering with the cheap glasses he’s set out.  Her curry is congealing on the table in front of them—he’s long since swiped the last of her chips—and the shattered remains of his spagbol and chips is left, because O’Leary’s would sell chips and chips if they could, but in lieu of that they manage to fit fried potatoes onto every single plate.  The bottle of wine is tucked between them like a small animal, empty of course.  He’s offered a run to the off license, but considering he can barely stand without listing to the left, they’ve basically given up for the night.

“You know I’d back off if you asked me to, right?” Eve asks him.  On the screen, the masculine hero is doing something suitably dashing; he doesn’t really know, because he’s taken off his glasses and the film is just a colourful blur.  Q considers the offer.

“No,” he says finally.  “I don’t—he’s still straight, Eve.  No amount of wishful thinking’s going to change that.”

“I don’t think he is.”

“Do me a favour,” Q sighs, slumping into her side for a snuggle.  “I suppose all those women were just him burying the urges deep?”  Eve sighs, too, pressing her lips to his hair.  “And if he wanted a boy, he could have a prettier one, anyway.”

“Pity party, table for one?”

“Lies aren’t flattering when they’re obvious,” he scolds, and Eve curls around him in a firm grip.

“Your self-esteem—”

“—is shit.  I know.”

“How many times do I have to tell you I’d fuck you if I had the parts necessary?” she asks.  And.  

He’s drunk enough for it; she might be, too.  He lets his lips brush hers, tastes the cheap curry and even cheaper wine, but it’s wrong.  It’s all wrong, from the shape of her in his hands to the fragrance of her hair, and they pull back agreeably, each of them wiping their mouths discreetly.  “Well, that was bloody awful,” he says into the empty room.  She laughs.

::

He’s never—today’s been shit because he started a little hungover and it hasn’t got any better—but he’s never felt jealous of one of Bond’s conquests before.  Well.  Never put himself in the place of Bond’s conquest, because Bond’s conquest has never been a man before, not in the years he’s been monitoring missions.  It’s never been like this, the German Ambassador’s son thin and tall and so, so handsome.  He’s on his knees before Bond and the security feed captures it all: the way he opens his mouth to plead for more, the way his limbs shake as though they can barely hold him up any longer, the way Bond bites at the skin between his shoulder blades as he fucks into him slow and powerful.  

The camera’s black and white, but he can see it, can see the flush that’s creeping up the back of Bond’s neck.  He can see the way thin limbs curl around Bond’s body in a clenching grasp.  The boy he’s fucking is thin, almost as thin as Q, and the juxtaposition is delicious; the boy makes Bond look powerful, and Bond makes him look waifish, sylphlike as he arches and twists, as he mouths at Bond’s throat like a lamprey and tangles his fingers in Bond’s hair.

Q can’t even recall why Bond’s fucking the boy.  All he remembers is the low hum of amused flirting, Bond’s quiet offer—“Shall we—?”—and the sick drum of excitement that had pulsed in his blood, the disbelief that had quickly morphed into arousal and then shame and is on its way to filling Q’s cock again.  He can hear it all, from the boy’s soft cries to the bullish puff of Bond’s breath, sharp with the effort of fucking into the pliant body beneath him, can hear the slide of limbs through the sheets on the hotel bed and the sticky smack of lube between them, can hear—and nearly faints when the boy shifts his leg to the side to reveal Bond’s fist as he works his cock.  Q’s whole world narrows to the sight so fast he has to grip the edge of the desk to keep from falling over and he’s fascinated, enthralled, enraptured by the way Bond twists his hand, the way he flicks his wrist, the way he grabs the boy’s orgasm and takes it from him with both hands—the one on his cock and the one on his throat so he can’t get away.

He can’t.  He absolutely can’t—dropping the headset to the desk, Q flees, stuffs himself into the TSS toilets and barely has the presence of mind to thumb the lock before he’s shivering over the sink, confused desire and frustration ripping through him with more force than he’s imagined he could feel them, than he’s imagined he could feel anything.  He wants.  To suck Bond off, he’s sure, to cradle that thick golden cock on his tongue until Bond is gripping his head and fucking his throat with ease; to beat the boy until there are satisfying handprints all over his pale, thin skin, as well.  To wank until his legs won’t hold him up anymore; to be sick at the sight of Bond touching someone—touching a man.  He splashes water on his face, waits for his cock to calm itself so he can have a piss, washes his hands slowly and meticulously until the whites of his blunt, short nails are brilliantly clean and his hands aren’t shaking anymore.  

When he makes it back to his desk, they’ve done.  The boy is lying on the bed—there’s something uncanny about his position, and Q recalls: this boy’s been an important linchpin in a child sex ring; he’s raped and murdered dozens of young boys barely younger than himself, though Q supposes that’s not going to happen anymore—and Bond’s smoking, watching the camera with wary eyes.

“My apologies, Double-oh Seven.  Something came up quite suddenly and I had to step away,” Q tells him through the headset.  To his surprise, Bond laughs.

“Wanking isn’t an emergency, Q.”

“I went to use the facilities,” Q tells him primly, and Bond laughs again.

“He reminded me of you,” Bond tells him, and heat dances up Q’s spine in broken-glass sparks.

“I don’t know whether or not I should be flattered.”  He is, though he tries to keep his voice dry.  

Bond laughs again, softer this time.  “Were you surprised?”

“About what, Bond?”

“That he was a man.  That I—with a man.”

Yes.  “No, of course not.  This is the twenty-first century.  I hear there are some men who prefer men, if you can imagine.”

“Brat.”  Bond’s voice is fond.  

Q thinks he could ask now, and it wouldn’t be out of place: ‘Do you?  Prefer—?’  But cowardice grips him by the bollocks, and when he opens his mouth to speak he ends up listening to Bond’s breath, raspy and heavy with nicotine.  It’s a moment of companionable silence, Bond relaxing after his usual cocktail of sex and violence, Q shaking under the onslaught of lust that seems to be clawing at his very core.  Bond takes a sticky breath—“Q—”

“We thank you for your service, Agent Double-oh Seven.  You’ll find on your mobile a reservation for the first flight back to London tomorrow morning—oh-six-forty,” Q tells him briskly, because he can’t talk about it right now, can’t talk about any of it.

Bond breathes again, then laughs quietly, voice wry.  “So eager to see me again?  That’s only four hours from now.”

“It will be a delicate situation, what with the ambassador’s son’s body being found.  We want you well clear of any fallout as quickly as possible,” Q informs him.

“Thank you, Q.”  He listens to Bond smoke the rest of his cigarette.

 


	3. Chapter 3

But it’s Eve who gets to make up the welcoming committee, since Q’s up to his elbows in bureaucratic bullshit by the time Bond’s back.  He’s tired of answering questions, tired of politicians, tired of bloody Flemish by the time he’s able to leave the office.  It’s not so late, but he’s still worn out, with just enough energy for a peck at Eve’s cheek before heading home for a shower and a long wank.  He’s got the mental images for it—got enough of them to last a year, he’s sure—and he intends to use them while they’re still fresh, though some niggling corner of his mind is a little startled by the thought of pulling himself to the memory of Bond fucking a molester.  The rest of him is stuck on a loop—“He reminded me of you” and Bond using thoughts of Q to get through it.  He’s stuck.

And so it’s Eve who gets to greet Bond when he comes in for his briefing with Mallory, Eve who’s leaning provocatively against the desk in a pose Q knows she uses to play up her gorgeous thighs.  He can appreciate, aesthetically, the curve of her arse, even though it makes him want to cry to see the way Bond’s eyes devour the slim line of her leg to where it disappears under her skirt.

“Stunning as always, Miss Moneypenny,” Q says with a smile, pressing his lips fondly to her temple.  

“Headed home, darling?”  Her voice is tense.  He has the distinct feeling he’s interrupted something, but Bond pins him with those brilliant eyes and he can’t help the small smile that comes.

“Mm.  Someone killed a diplomat with immunity over on the mainland.  I’ve had it on good authority that he was an arsehole, though, so I don’t know how far they’ll go with an inquiry,” Q offers.  Bond’s eyes all but sparkle.

“Oh, is that what happened?” Eve asks.  “Himself was all in a tizzy about it earlier.”

“Someone was upset there’s one less child abuser in the world,” Q confirms.  “But it’s over now, and I’m for bed.”

“Goodnight, love.  Sleep tight,” Eve says fondly.  Bond’s grin is wicked.

He can smell Bond’s aftershave when he brushes by on his way to M’s door, pausing to speak directly into Q’s ear: “Goodnight, love.  Sleep tight.”

Q rather imagines it means something else from Bond.  For the first time, he imagines himself winning this thing.

::

It takes both hands around his courage to ask.  He doesn’t mean to do it, actually, but they’re standing at his desk and Bond is making eyes at him, expression unreadable but soft, and the next thing he knows, his nails are digging into his palms as he mentions—so very, very casually—that there’s a film out he’d like to see.

“You don’t go to the cinema often, do you, Bond?” he asks.  His chest is hot, full of captured breath that echoes inside him like a maelstrom.  Bond pauses where he’s examining a flash bomb, face patient.

“From time to time, but no, not often,” Bond agrees.

Q tries to stay cool, keep confident, but he’s sure he’s shaking nervous.  “You could join me?” he offers.

Bond’s smile at the request is sweet, a revelation; he brushes his fingertips along Q’s own slowly.  “I’d like that.”

Just like that, it’s a date.  The first Q’s had in a long while, and with someone who actually understands that the job comes first.  Q’s insides do a happy turn and he blinks at the tech between them, trying to focus even as he feels his lips pulling up at the corners.

“Wear something pretty,” he adds impulsively, and Bond’s laugh is bright.

He’s still buzzing when Eve joins him for lunch, poking through her piri piri chicken salad, the rocket quivering delicately on her fork when he blurts out: “I’ve got a date!”

“Giving up on Bond, then?” she asks delicately, and Q shakes his head.

“Not at all.  We’re going to see a film.”

“Oh?”  There’s that strange, tense thing between them again, and Q freezes, sausage roll halfway to his mouth.  He wonders if she feels jealous the way he does, for all she’s always encouraging him, if it eats and digs at her the way it does him to think of losing.

“It’s just a date,” he tells her, even though, no.  It feels like so much more than that, and it bothers him to push it down, to make it smaller than it is inside his head where it looms over everything else, letters picked out in neon and glowing: he has a Date.  It’s more than he’s had in months, and for a hot second resentment sweeps over him, bitter and galling and hurt that she can’t be pleased for him.  It’s not even getting off—though he’s sure that would be lovely—as much as it is soothing this lonely creature that’s curled inside his chest.  She doesn’t understand, of course.  How could she, when she has only to bat her lashes and have as much companionship as she could need?  He forces a smile.  “I can cancel—?”

“Don’t you dare,” Eve responds, chucking his chin with a finger.  “Go, boy, and get you some.”

And just like that, the tension melts.  Q bumps his temple against her cheek like an affectionate cat and Eve laughs, mussing his hair with her hands.  “You are actually the best,” he tells her, leaning into the petting.  “Really.”

“Cuddleslut,” she accuses fondly.  “He’ll have his hands full with you.”

Q waggles his eyebrows.  “That’s rather the point, isn’t it?”

Eve just laughs.

He waits for Bond in his office like a girl in her room awaiting a suitor, wearing one of his nicer shirts and leaving the jumpers out of it.  He has no idea what someone does on a date with James Bond, but his stomach has been in knots of anticipation all day.  Bond’s smile when he collects him is smooth, sweet and thick as cream, and Q can’t help but match it as they head out the door together.  He swears he hears a wolf whistle that has Eve’s shrill twist to it, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Bond.  

There’s nothing special about Bond’s clothing—the man habitually outdresses him any day of the week, and it’s not like a film is any particular reason to dress for dinner—but he’s reveling in the fact that he can look his fill for once, and he doesn’t hesitate to confess that fact to Bond when he raises a brow.  Bond’s flattered expression says he’s charmed, and it goes a long way to bouey Q’s spirits as they slide into Bond’s car and head to the cinema.  

It’s definitely not the Odeon in Leicester Square, but there’s a crowd when they walk up after parking.  It’s not a small cinema, not really—Q’s got a thing for the full-sized bar with its fair trade snacks and adorably geeky bartenders—but it’s still intimate when they sit and the film starts; it’s an old one, obscure and one of Q’s favorites remembered from a distant childhood spent absorbing strange American films from the year he turned twelve and was first discovering that some boys liked boys and some girls liked girls, and he curls his fingers around Bond’s when the familiar theme starts.

But Bond is bored, doesn’t see the magic of the movie, starts to drift and fidget in his seat.  He kneads Q’s thigh in the dark, and Q squeaks.

“Bond!” Q hisses.  Somewhere a few seats away, someone shushes him.

“You’ve seen it before, right?” Bond asks quietly, and yes, but that’s not the point.  On the screen, Jessica Tandy is talking with a voice dry as dust, and in the theatre Bond is sliding his fingers over Q’s crotch.

“This really, really isn’t that kind of film, Bond,” Q tells him firmly, and he wants Bond to laugh, to back off, to tut back at the people sitting around them who are beginning to eye them with irritation.  He doesn’t.  He finds Q’s confused cock and palms it where it lies sleepy and unsure between his thighs, and Q can feel his face go hot and red at the growing mumbles of disapproval he can hear filtering in.  There’s shuffling, and Q realises it’s a matter of leave or be barred; it takes all the dignity he’s capable of to stand, ducking his head apologetically as he ekes his way down the row to the aisle.  He stands there a moment, gazing wistfully at the screen—and what a perfect night this could have been, he thinks, spent curled in his seat with a glass of wine as part of an audience who loves these old films as much as he does—until Bond realises he’s not coming back and stands to follow.  On their way out, they pass the usher on his way in, and Q’s ears heat with humiliation.

They’re halfway to the car again before Bond speaks.  “I apologise if I misunderstood what your purpose was here tonight.”  There’s not much warmth to Bond’s voice now, and Q pauses, looking at him.

“I wanted to take you to a film.  A film that I happen to love very much,” Q tells him.  “What did you think my purpose was?”

“It’s a twenty-odd year old film being shown in an arthouse cinema in Clapham, Q.  I thought you wanted to get me in a dark place.”

“You thought I wanted to fuck you in the cinema.”

“I thought you wanted to start somewhere, and if we were compatible we might end up somewhere else,” Bond tells him, and yes, that makes quite a lot of sense.  Q’s stomach hurts.

“I thought we were on a date,” he says, and even he can hear how small his voice sounds, like something that can be crushed underfoot.  Bond laughs, and it’s not unkind but neither is it kind nor credulous nor disbelieving.  Q opens his mouth to speak but doesn’t have any words.

“What do you think grown-ups do on a date, then?” Bond asks, and Q’s fingers clench on the strap of his bag.  “Hold hands in the dark?”  Q is silent, standing abandoned in the middle of the pavement as the tourists pass by, confused as to where the river’s gone and how to find the nearest tube station; his Oyster burns a hole in his pocket and he wants to run away.  “Look,” Bond says finally.  “I do find you attractive, but I’m not going to be your boyfriend.  I don’t do whirlwind romances.  I’m sorry to disappoint.”

“You just want a shag.”

Bond kisses him, and even through the veil of his upset feelings, Q can feel it’s still there: that spark that had twisted him all around the idea, all around the promise of something starting here.  When Bond pulls back, Q follows, and then they’re kissing in the middle of the pavement, passersby turning to look away until Bond draws back again, one hand on Q’s shoulder.  “Q.”

“Just a shag, yeah?” Q asks breathlessly.

Bond shakes his head.  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Q.”

He doesn’t even offer a ride.

::

Q doesn’t tell Eve why he’s showing up at her flat with a pint of ice cream and a bottle of wine, but even though she looks startled, she lets him in.  It’s been a few days since his disastrous date with Double-oh Seven, days of hiding in his office in shame and furtively wanking to the memory of Bond’s hands on him.  He’s had the weirdest, saddest erection since Wednesday, and a Friday evening with no threats of terrorism on the radar means it’s time for a proper drunk cry with his best friend.

“Thank Christ you’re home,” he hums to himself as he drops his coat off on the hook.  “This has been the week from hell.”  When he glances up, her flat is a disaster zone, random articles shoved off tables and the sofa in disarray.  Eve catches his notice and starts plucking things back into order, but Q noses the air, catching the faint and familiar scent of sex.  “Naughty!  You’ve been having a torrid affair in your front room, haven’t you?  Not even good enough for your bed?”

Eve smiles wanly.  “Something like that.”

“Or too eager to get your knickers down that you never made it back there,” he considers, because it’s distracting.  Because it’s funny to tease her and because it makes his own chest sting less and because he’s jealous, to be honest.

“Can we not, tonight?” she asks.

“No wine?  Is he still here?” Q whispers, delighted.

“No men.  I’m done with them.  I’m either going to become a lesbian or a Tibetan monk.  Perhaps a lesbian Tibetan monk.”  She looks tired, dark circles beneath her eyes and a strained kiss tucked in the corner of her mouth.  “No more cock for me, thanks.”

“You’ve sucked the life out of the hunt, now.  There’s no fun in pulling if I know the competition’s any less than you,” he tells her, squeezing her hand.  It feels cold, clammy.  “Then no complaining about boys tonight.  I’ve got ice cream and alcohol, and I’ll let you paint my fingernails.  We’ll have a good, old-fashioned sleep over.”

“Will you let me braid your hair?” she asks, and even though the humour’s thin, he laughs.

They end up as they always do: sauced out of their minds in front of the telly.  Q’s licking caramel from his fingertips and contemplating whether or not to just pick up the paper cup of melted goo and upturn it into his mouth when Eve’s fingers in his hair turn contemplative from where she has been sneaking fairy plaits into its dense mass.  He tips his head back in her lap to look at her.

“It wasn’t kind, banning boy talk when you got here.  You needed to talk about something,” she tells him, and he shrugs.

“I needed comfort.  You’re more than comfortable, to me.”

“Do you still want to talk about it?” she asks anyway.  He considers.

“Not really.  I think it’s just—we’re not compatible, Bond and me.  Wanted different things,” he says.  Now that he’s not picking at the sugar, he can feel the lump of ice cream cold and sore in his gut.  “I wanted different things.”

Eve is silent, her fingers encouraging, and before he quite understands it, Q’s spilling under her hands.  “He felt me up at the cinema, and all I could think was I wanted a romance like the one in the film we were supposed to be watching.  I took him to the one with the—you know, playing in Clapham?  You kept saying no.”

“With the people eating each other?”  Eve’s nose wrinkles delicately.  It’s adorable.

“You’d focus on that?  It’s about the powerful bond shared between two women in a situation in which they can never fully understand or explore their feelings for each other, and it’s the cannibalism you focus on?”

“You said they boiled the chap up and fed him to the town.”

“So they did.  Arsehole deserved it.”

“You have the strangest taste in film.”

He’s silent for a moment.  “It’s important to me.  I wanted—I don’t know what I wanted.  Something more than a quick shag in the car park, though.”

“He had you in the car park?”  Eve sounds properly scandalised, and Q laughs.

“No, though not for lack of trying.”  He sobers.  “He told me he doesn’t do romance.  That I was a child for wanting to hold hands at the cinema like a sixth former.”

“He called you a sixth former?” she asks, tone snappish and eyes flashing.

“No, not in those words,” Q confesses.  “I only felt that way as he kissed me goodbye in the middle of the tourists on the pavement and left to go find an adult to shag.”

Eve is quiet, her fingers working through his hair in fits and starts.  “Don’t waste your heart on James Bond, love,” she tells him finally, leaning over to press a kiss to his forehead. “If he can’t see how special you are….”

“Did your fellow hurt your feelings?” he asks her carefully.  He can still smell the man on the pillows, a sweet and spicy scent that’s just familiar enough to be annoying and just faded enough to be elusive.  There’s a pair of Eve’s knickers on the floor, kicked almost under the couch, but he can’t tell if that’s because of the tryst or just her generally slovenly cleaning habits.

“Nothing so dramatic, darling,” she tells him.  “Things started out a lot hotter than expected, but by the end I found I wasn’t quite feeling it.”

“Bad in bed,”Q confirms.  “Sometimes the hottest ones are.  When he’s all hard body and perfect hair, just the right amount of manscaping and an eight inch cock, he just expects you to hop on it and go, right?”

Eve smiles, petting his mouth in a shushing motion.  “You’re like a horny little goat, aren’t you?”  He bleats at her to see her laugh.

“Well, you can rest assured that Bond’s all yours.  I didn’t want to be his first try since boarding school, but—I feel embarrassed to admit—I didn’t want to be his backseat boy either.  Backseat bum boy, kept in the boot until he wants someone to suck him off.”  The words hurt coming out, and Eve stills.  “Not that you don’t deserve better, too.  But if you want a go, I’m sure it’d be fun.”  She hums, petting again, and he’s comfortable, drunk on affection and sweets and wine; he’s asleep in seconds.

When he wakes, it’s to a feeling like cat in his mouth, thick and furred.  He forgot to brush his teeth before bed, and he putters around cleaning up in the bathroom: combing his hair, brushing his teeth and gargling away the pong of old wine, showering before grabbing a change from the clothes he keeps at hers for days like this.  Eve is out—a note stuck to the fridge informs him of a pilates class and warns him that the eggs inside may not be what could technically be described as edible; he settles down with a tower of buttered toast and the whole pot of tea in front of her computer, because Q is a nosy bastard.  She changes her passwords regularly, and he’s taught her what he can about dynamic proxies, but it still takes him a ridiculously short time to get into her home security program, pulling up the six cameras that make up the primary zones of protection.  He amuses himself for a moment watching her neighbors have a row in the hall before settling in for his goal: finding out the name of Eve’s mystery date, because it sounds like he was less than respectful and Q is the kind of protective nosy parker who’ll pry and then punish a man for being less than fantastic to his friend.

He doesn’t have far to look: the night before last, not a full eighteen hours before he’d arrived, he finds Eve stumbling down the hall to her door, fellow in tow.  He can’t quite make anything out—he needs to tell her to replace the bulb in the hall—but he watches her scratching at the lock with her key, the combination between drink and the fellow’s roaming hands distracting her.  He switches to the internal view of the door as it opens, and it’s James Bond with his mouth on Eve’s throat, with his hand around her breast thumbing her nipple and his thick fingers working up the inside of her thigh.  Purple, he registers numbly, glancing over at the knickers on the floor as on the screen Eve laughs and Bond tugs the same pair down her thighs.  She’s wet, some distant part of his mind tells him, and he feels a far-off pride that the upgrades to her cameras were good enough that he can see the slick sheen on his skin as Bond begins to touch her.

It’s his own fault.  It’s his own goddamned fault, his own fucking, cunting, arse-shitting fault that he feels at this moment an ache so tremendous he can’t find the edges of it.  His fingers tremble as he turns off the screen—Eve drops to her knees, working open the placket of Bond’s trousers—and doesn’t bother shutting down the system.  He’s been caught on her computer before, usually checking his email but sometimes checking hers; he wonders for a second if she’ll be confused when she sees it on when she gets home before he realises he doesn’t fucking care.  At all.  The better question is how long it will take her to cotton on that he’s seen them together, and Eve’s a smart lady.  He knows she’ll know fast.

He can’t bear the thought of the toast he’s got waiting for him but he can’t bring himself to toss it out, just slides it onto the counter with a note—“Eat something.  Love you.—Q”—and walks out, numb.  

When he was a child, he’d broken his nose playing football with the other boys.  He’s got a lump in it still, a reminder each time he looks in the mirror as if he’d ever forget the sudden flush of salt down the back of his throat sick and warm, as if he’d forget that devastating crunch that had terrified him.  He thinks now of the moment before that, the moment when he’d seen the other boy’s knee coming but been unable to stop his trajectory, unable to do anything more than decide that it was going to hurt more than anything he’d experienced to that point.  And then the knee had connected, a bright-hot shadow thick and empty, and he’d marveled that it didn’t actually hurt, that the worst part of the whole thing had been that broken second of pants-shitting fear and that this whole broken nose thing was a lark.

The pain hits him when he reaches the bus stop just the same as it had then: sudden and cramping and tasting of blood, the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, as inescapable and overwhelming as drowning in warm oil.  Q covers his mouth against the sharp sound that pushes out of him like a stolen breath, turns away from the others at the stop in a grab for composure.  He clutches at it, pulls it around himself until he’s smothered the tears under the heavy weight of forced, numbing apathy, and when the bus comes he pushes his way to the upper deck, staring out as the city passes by.

 


	4. Chapter 4

He’s been in the labs all day, working out his anger and his frustration, the jealousy that claws at his throat when he sees Eve and her hangdog expression.  They talked briefly at lunch, just enough for him to assure her he still loves her even if he can’t stand the sight of her face right now, and he’d ended up sitting in the lab with his sandwich on his knees and enough caffeine to incapacitate a horse.  He’s buzzed on it now, bopping across the garage with his lab coat on and the music deafening.  He hasn’t been disturbed in hours—the others know better when he’s having his version of a strop—and that’s the way he likes it; he’s bent over the guts of a Jaguar XF with headlamps like slitted eyes when he feels unmistakably appreciative hands on his lower back and swears, neatly ducking to keep from smacking his head on the bonnet.  It’s Bond, of course.

He considers speaking to Bond, demanding just what the fuck it is he thinks he’s doing with his fingertips already inching into the gap between Q’s jumper and trousers, wriggling against the bared skin as if he hadn’t just fucked Eve a few days ago, but instead he rolls his eyes, bending back over the car and almost loses the wrench when Bond takes the move as carte blanche to reach under his jumper.  Bond’s hands are still friendly, still no higher than his waist beneath the loose, slubby knit, even if Q burns in them, and Q knows he could—should—stop him here.  Should tell him off, read him the riot act for treating both Q and Eve as disposable sex objects, but Bond steps up behind him and through the seat of his work trousers, Bond’s body is hot, animal.  Bond bumps him—accidental, testing the waters—and when Q doesn’t snap back it translates into a slow, gloating thrust.  Q shivers, and that’s all the encouragement Bond needs.

They’re sheltered by the bonnet, this particular angle obscured from both the door and the cameras, and Bond’s hand sprawling across the small of his back makes him melt, spread his thighs, cock his hips so Bond’s grinding is a full and meaty ride against his bollocks and the rapidly-growing swell of the base of his cock.  Bond groans when Q cants back at him, lifting himself on tiptoe to get as much contact as possible, and by the time Q realises he’s encouraging Bond to fuck against him from behind, Bond’s fingers are locked around his hips and his voice is a low, filthy hum in his ear.

“God, if I’d known you were such a little slut for it, I would have never left you there on the pavement.  Yet here you are at work with your cock hard in your trousers, bent over the engine block of a car and panting for it.  Literally—can you hear yourself?” Bond asks him, and Q flushes.  It’s not his fault he can’t catch a full breath; Bond crushes him into the car with a thrust against his arse that’s so firm Q’d think he’d actually put it inside if he weren’t still wearing his trousers.  He moans, then freezes.

“The cameras—”

“—can’t see you from this angle, can they?  But they can hear you, can hear you begging for it, crying for a taste of my cock.  Can’t they?”

Bond gives him a particularly precise thrust and Q hisses his yes so long and low it’s more sibilance than word.  He can feel Bond’s smile against his throat for precisely ten seconds before he registers Bond’s hand at his zip, fingers tripping over his trousers before they’re at his knees, Q’s skin still stinging with the speed.  Then there’s a hand on his cock and fingers at his mouth—”I want to fuck you.  Suck.”—and cold chrome at his thighs.

It’s wrong.  It’s filthy, the kind of grievous sin that would have him immediately fired, faster than he’s ever dared to go even on his wildest club nights, but he’s already making excuses for himself—the fact is he wants this, and Bond’s spit-slicked fingers on his arsehole lights him up like a pinball machine, legs falling open and hips rocking as much as he can in Bond’s grip.  “Bond—” he manages breathlessly, and Bond’s chuckle in his ear is dark.

“At work, Quartermaster.  And you always seemed like such a good little boy,” Bond tuts, and Q has just enough presence of mind to be thankful for the sound of a condom even as he keens at the loss of those thick fingers in his arse.  Above him, Bond’s weight crushes him hard into the car, cock chilling from the metal’s touch so firm and unyielding against his aching flesh.  “Tell me how much you want my cock.”

It’s as if the floodgates have opened: months of fantasies pour from Q’s mouth: he wants to suck Bond, wants to drop to his knees in front of him and lift out that beautiful golden cock, wants to put it in his mouth and taste it, wants to bring Bond off at the back of his throat, wants Bond to finger him until he’s fucked-out and sore from it, wants Bond to rim him like he’s eating pussy until his legs are shaking and his cock goes off untouched, wants to climb into Bond’s lap and ride him like a show pony, back straight and show-perfect and body athletic.  He wants to beg.  He wants Bond to fuck him so hard he has bruises.  He’s still describing lovingly the sweet stench of Bond’s sweat as he fucks into the sex-exhausted jelly lump of him in Q’s imagination deep and dirty when Bond’s cock finds his prostate.  Q’s moan is louder than either of them expect.

“Shh-shh,” Bond shushes him, laughing.  “Christ, you’re an eager thing.”

“Just fuck me, please,” Q whimpers.

“So hot for it.  To think I—” Bond says, and Q could think about the video, about Bond’s fingers on Eve’s cunt slow and slick and wet with her, but those same fingers wrap around his cock, touch the head with delicate, probing intensity, and he’s twitching through a shattered orgasm in Bond’s arms.  Bond holds him up through it, until Q’s boneless and languid and sex-eyed with pleasure.  Then he lays him down on the engine block, pins him with a hand on the throat and another on the arch of his spine, and fucks.

He feels the moment Bond comes, not the heat or the wet of it through the condom but the thickness of his frozen muscles, the taut spasm of his thighs along the backs of his own and the clench of his fingers that will leave delicious bruises Q can revisit in private later.  He’s been fucked within an inch of his life, legs still quivering beneath him as Bond pulls out, tucks himself away, then eases Q’s lazy cock back into his trousers and zips him.  They kiss, slow and unhurried, the first moment they’ve spent face-to-face since Bond entered the room, and when they break apart, Q shudders, rights himself, and tugs his jumper back into place.

“Mr. Bond.  To what do I owe the—” he stumbles, and Bond smirks.  “—pleasure?”

“The pleasure?  That you owe to having a gorgeously curved arse.  Absolutely tantalizing,” Bond all but purrs, smug as he palms the bottom edge of his seat, fingertips brushing the parts of him that are still tingling into lovely bruises.  “But M wanted you in his office for a moment.  Something to do with the budget.”

“I’ll have to wipe the tapes first; can you tell him I’ll be a few minutes?”

Bond pauses.  “I’m not quite welcome in M’s,” he says, frowning.  Q thrills—he means he’s managed to piss off Moneypenny, and Eve won’t tolerate him hanging about like a bad smell while she’s still angry.  “Sorry.”

“Not a problem,” Q replies, and even he can hear the cheer, mood bubbly and almost effervescent now, in his voice.  Bond regards him curiously before settling in with a slow, teasing smile.

“What a difference a good dicking makes in you,” Bond says, and Q’s grin widens.

“You really are a filthy letter to Mayfair, aren’t you?”

“Mayfair’s letters wish they were me,” Bond tells him, and it’s not the most clever comeback, but Q gives him a smile anyway.

“I’m sure they do.  ‘Good dicking’?  How Etonian.”

“Can I sneak into your room after lights out, then?” Bond asks, and Q flushes.

“After a performance like that?  You could have me over the lions in Trafalgar Square.”

“At the foot of the Cock?”

“At your feet, with your cock.”  

Bond groans, yanking him in for another kiss.  “You’ll be the death of me.  Can I come by yours?”

“At nine.  Do you know—” Q asks, but Bond fixes him with a patronising look.  “Of course you bloody know where it is.”

“Wear something pretty,” Bond quips back at him, and under the flush of endorphins Q feels something ugly twist.

“How about nothing at all?” he suggests, forcing a smile.  Bond doesn’t want romance, he reminds himself.  He wants sex.

“You know what I like, don’t you?”

He makes it to Mallory’s office with a flash drive containing the incriminating evidence tucked in his pocket and the official recording clean as fresh-driven snow.  It turns out Mallory just wants to verify a few numbers on his expense reports—the Double-oh programme requires how many guns per year?—before he’s sent off with a reminder to keep his staff hours low during slow periods—a subtle suggestion that Q himself wash some of the days of overtime hanging over his head, even though they both know that he is essentially on call and may be pulled back into the office later; it’s habit that has him stopping by Eve’s desk to gloat about the unexpected half-holiday before he realises that he isn’t supposed to be talking to her.  He finds he doesn’t care about how angry he’s supposed to be when he sees her eyes wide and soft, and he sits on the edge of her desk with a smile.

“I miss you,” he tells her simply, and she opens her arms; just like that, they’re friends again.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t say anything,” she says, and he freezes, guilty.

“I have a confession—” he starts.

“No, I—”

“I have to.  I know I was supposed to—”

“We didn’t.  Really, we didn’t.”

He stops, confused.  He’s trying to tell her he’s violated the bet, that he’s fucked Bond despite promising to back off if she got there first, but he ends up just blinking at her.

“We didn’t.  Have sex.”

“Pull the other one.  I saw.”  And he’ll feel guilty about peeking later but for now she’s shaking her head, curls bobbing.

“We didn’t.  We—he got handsy, and I was going to, but then all I could think about was your sad little face and I just.  I couldn’t do that to you.  You like him a lot, don’t you?” she asks softly.

“I—” he starts again, but he’s not sure where he’s going.  “You didn’t?  Really?”

“I didn’t.  I stopped him before...before.  I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

Q’s relieved laugh startles them both.  “And I was worried about how to tell you—I’m giving Bond another go.”

Eve’s expression is strange; it doesn’t look like jealousy, she’s not angry or annoyed, but there’s something disapproving all the same.  “I don’t know that’s such a terribly good idea, darling.  You didn’t sound compatible.”

“God, are we compatible,” Q nearly purrs with satisfaction, and Eve’s eyes go wide.

“When did you—not here, surely?”

“Of course not,” Q tells her, and her lips press into a thin line.

“Did he—?”

“I am a grown man capable of making my own decisions, Eve,” he reminds her sternly.

“Terrible decisions.  Q, I can’t—”

“It won’t happen again, I assure you.”

“You won’t see him again?” she asks, and it’s starting to sound like jealousy, ugly and petty.

“Of course I’ll see him again.  He’s coming over to mine tonight,” he says.  She’s quiet for a moment.

“Is it a date, then?” she asks, and for a blinding second he hates her with every cell of his being.  It’s not fair, some part of him shouts and stamps its foot, that she should know exactly where his reservations lie, that she should ask him the questions, point out the issues he’s been too busy shoving aside from himself.  “Or is he coming over to have his cock sucked?”

“He doesn’t do dates,” he reminds her, and she doesn’t say anything back, just brings his knuckles to her cheeks with her hands.

“You know I love you, my darling,” she says finally.

“I do.”

“This is a stupid idea.”

“I know.”

“Come to mine after and I’ll braid your hair,” she tells him, and he grins with false bravado.

 


	5. Chapter 5

He’s cleaned the flat twice by the time Bond gets there, cooked supper for the both of them and eaten his, put the leftovers away and considered taking them out to reheat before he gets there, pulled out a bottle of cheap wine and made a mad dash to the off-license for a whisky he doesn’t even like and sets him back nearly thirty pounds; he sneaks it into the back of the cabinet so he can pull it out as though he’s had it a while, but there are glasses chilling in the freezer and he’s made ice.  Bond’s late.

The knock at the door is decisive, firm, and when Q opens the door Bond greets him with a cool kiss to the corner of his mouth.  “Smells good in here,” Bond tells him, and Q curses himself for having already eaten.  He can split the leftovers into two portions and force his way through another meal—

“Did you want to eat something?” he asks, and Bond’s hands are on him suddenly, wrapping around his hips and tugging him in.

“Oh, definitely.”  Bond’s voice is dark and rich, and Q shivers.  He skitters away nervously, and he can feel Bond’s eyes on him as he steps into the kitchen.  

“Something to drink?  Whisky, wine, tea?  There’s soft drinks, too, maybe a lucozade left?”  As if he hasn’t prepped his kitchen extensively.

Bond helps himself to a seat at the counter.  “Whisky, please.  And water.”

“Whisky and water?  Or a whisky and a water?” Q confirms.  “And food?”

“Separate, please.  No food.”

“Food later, then,” Q chats to himself.  He knows he’s making an ass of himself, knows Bond thinks it’s funny to see him so worked up, but he can’t help it.  He considers the ice and serves it without, then fetches himself a glass of wine so he has something to do besides stare.  James Bond is in his flat, in his kitchen, drinking his whisky that he’s bought just to impress him.  “Good?” Q blurts.

Bond smiles.  “It’s fine.  Come sit next to me.  It’s unnerving,you hovering.”

Q sinks into a half-seat on the other stool and lets his fingertips tap the countertop.  He watches Bond drink, finishes his own glass of wine, and pops up to get another.  He’s still fiddling with the corkscrew when Bond speaks again.  “You’re nervous.  Come here.”  Moving to Bond’s side, he lets him position him near enough that he can feel the heat from Bond’s powerful thigh as a brand across the front of his legs.  “You’re not a whisky person, I can tell,” Bond tells him, and Q shakes his head mutely.  “D’you buy based on price?”

“Asked the clerk,” Q confesses breathlessly.

“He has good taste.  Must have been devastated when you didn’t collect his number, too,” Bond teases.

“What makes you think I didn’t?”

“You didn’t slam the door in my face when I knocked.”

“I wouldn’t.”  And Q can hear how sincere he is in his own voice, how sweet and earnest he sounds.  He winces.

“My performance earlier that good?” Bond asks, guiding them back seamlessly from Q’s glaring flare up of emotion, of romance, of all the things this isn’t and will never be.

“Passable enough to earn you a second shot,” Q tells him indifferently, and Bond grins.

“Oh, I’d better impress you this time, huh?”  There’s a rumble to Bond’s voice that’s dangerous, sinful and heady and rich like the tang of gunpowder on the battlefield, and Q could wallow in it if he lets himself.  Absolutely wallow, roll around it until he’s filthy like a dog in rubbish if Bond would let him.

“You’d better.”

The whisky tastes like smoke on Bond’s tongue, a subtle, distant sweetness that’s oaky and shot through with traces of vanilla, and Q thinks he could learn to appreciate the stuff if he only ever drank it this way, with Bond’s hands hot and enormous on his body and his skin trembling with sensation.  Bond swears and slides to his throat to start what Q is sure is going to become an impressive love mark.

“You intend to eat me tonight, Bond?” he asks playfully, and Bond stills, biting hard enough at Q’s skin that he cries out, tender and bruising.  

“Go to your bedroom and undress, Q.  I’ll be there in a moment.”

So he lets Bond take his moment, lets him finish his drink in peace, and by the time Bond makes his way to the bedroom, Q is naked and shivering slightly, pose demure but cock rampant with eyes averted and hungry.  Bond’s hand along the line of his back is epiphany, the sudden realisation that if it weren’t for his cowardice Q could have had this ages ago; Bond touches him and he sighs into it, rocking on the balls of his feet slightly.

“Suck me hard,” Bond tells him, and Q falls to his knees to obey.

Bond has a beautiful cock.  Holding its perfect weight in his hand, Q can see how Bond would be able to cat his way around the world, because the urge to press it with adoring kisses is almost irresistible, but then he doesn’t have to resist it.  It’s got its own flavour as dark and heady as any whisky, a musk that draws him in until he’s nosing at the rich gold curls at the base and sucking at the base of it in lingering kisses that leave his cheeks tingling with friction from Bond’s pubic hair.  He trips the tip of his nose along the skin, stretching his tongue out behind in little flicks like a snake’s tongue, tasting the air that’s so heavily scented with Bond’s arousal.  There are the faintest glimmers of salt on his tongue when he slips, tongue touching skin, but he manages to pull a full-body shudder from him when he reaches the head.  Bond’s past hard, headed fast toward leaking, and he hasn’t even put it in his mouth yet—that’s something to be proud of.  When he does, the way Bond groans and fists his hands in Q’s hair makes him go hot all over.

There’s something filthy about blowing a man who’s still dressed while he kneels naked on the floor.  Q can feel his throat going soft and wet, can feel a bruise forming on his soft palate, can feel Bond’s fingers clenching with the urge to give in and just fuck his mouth.  He leans back on his heels, slicking Bond’s wet cock in a fist.  “You can fuck my face if you want to,” he says as casually as he can without revealing just how desperately he really wants it.  Bond knows, of course; Bond always knows.

His thrusts go rough and fast, cock pounding a bruise into the back of Q’s throat that he’s going to feel tomorrow, he’s sure.  For now, it’s enough to feel Bond’s trembling, to choke and nearly gag and to drool down his front as he opens himself for more, more cock, more Bond.  Bond’s fingers knot in his hair; he’s holding Q still but he can’t grasp Q’s tongue, and he makes broken, hurt noises when Q presses the flat of his tongue firm against the underside of his cock.  Then he’s out, holding Q still with the hand tangled in his hair, and stroking off furiously; the first shot streaks across Q’s glasses, and even though he’d known it was coming, he still jumps, jerks in Bond’s grip and feels it when some of his hair comes loose, the pinch as Bond’s fist closes to keep him there while he comes on his face.  His tongue darts out to clean his lips; Bond’s cock is there, wiping off the tip as it pulses weakly against the soft, damp surface.

“Get on the bed.  Show me your arse,” Bond commands, and when Q moves too slow for Bond’s pleasure, he finds himself hauled bodily onto the bed, sees Bond fumbling in his nightstand for lube, and finds himself stuffed up with two fingers, all fast enough to set his legs to shaking and his heart to thudding in his chest.    “Posh little whore,” Bond taunts, and Q shakes under his touch.

Bond touches him roughly, just the far side of too fast, too hard, too deep, drawing yips and yelps and gasps from Q as he squirms on hands and knees to tip his hips into a better position, to rock his frustrated cock against the bedding, to widen his sprawl until Bond’s hand finally pulls back and Bond replaces it with his cock.  The pace is bruising, and Q cries into it for more.  Bond tugs him firm with little lilting dips and twists that leave Q panting for it and gasping like an asthmatic, and when Q comes it’s both overwhelming and almost anticlimactic, this feeling of hypersensitivity that has him strangely grateful that it’s over.  He’s loose and heavy, limbs like sandbags as Bond manoeuvers him into position so he can keep fucking him through his languor, even as his legs tremble like jelly and his come soaks into his skin.  Bond finally comes with a pneumatic sigh, sinking heavy against him until Q shifts them over.  His cock makes a weak, thrilled little lurch at the press of Bond’s ridged abdomen when he curls against him, and his heart follows at the feel of Bond’s fingers in his hair.

“A guy could get used to this,” Q muses idly, and Bond laughs underneath him.

“You can still talk?” Bond grouses pleasantly.

“You’ll just have to work harder next time,” Q hums speculatively.  “Try toys,” he suggests.

Bond laughs, and the quiet between them is sweet, comfortable.  Q can no more stop the kiss he presses to Bond’s chest than he can prevent breathing, and the press of Bond’s hand on his shoulder shoving him away hurts the same as suffocation.  “What—?”

“I’ve told you, Q.”

It hits him like a medicine ball to the chest; he nods, ducks his head.  “Sorry.  Forgot.”

“I need to know you can do a relationship that’s just sex.  I don’t want to be your boyfriend,” Bond tells him, and what comes to Q is hot and ugly, anger and hurt frustration.

“It’s not like you don’t have enough options for sex,” he snaps, and Bond turns a piqued eyebrow on him.

“Do tell,” he says, voice dry.

“And to think I’d thought we might—I should have just stuck to the terms and I wouldn’t be sitting here with—”

“Terms.”  Bond says the word slowly, contemplative, and something in Q freezes.  “Terms?”

Q looks at Bond and knows he has to tell him, knows—it’s biting at him, and he’s a bloody shambles sitting on the bed covered in come and saliva and love bites.  “A bet,” he confesses, and he’s unable to meet Bond’s eyes, unable to watch as Bond’s opinion of him changes.

Bond breathes in, holds it.  “You had better explain,” he says finally, and.

And Q does.  In little, starting fits at first, he describes how long this crush has eaten him up, how jealous and silly he’d felt each time Bond bedded someone and he wondered, why not me?  He covers the part where he and Eve had made the truly ridiculous decision, reaches their failure of a date, and starts talking about his poor, shattered heart and the memory of that security footage when—

“Stop.  Just—stop.”  Bond’s voice sounds strained and Q looks up at him, heart in his mouth.  “I just—can you hear yourself?  Can you?  Fucking hear yourself?”  He looks incredulous; it’s not the loving acceptance Q’d imagined when he’s let himself daydream this moment, this confession, and when he reaches for Bond’s hand, Bond shrinks back, pulling further until Q will either have to chase or follow.  He does neither, just watches.

“You don’t even know me, Q,” Bond tells him, and that’s not quite true.  Q opens his mouth to speak and Bond quells him with a look.  “You’ve listened to me fucking other people and you think you have this idea of what I’m like, but you don’t.  Christ, Q, before you started throwing yourself at me, we had a cordial work relationship and nothing more.”

Nothing more.  The words hit him like bricks, lobbed with cracking accuracy.  “I—”

“And you and your friend come up with a frankly disturbing idea to what?  To test me?  Because I’m an experiment, because it’s such a sure thing that I’ll want to fuck one of you?”

“Didn’t you want both of us?” Q mutters bitterly, and Bond scoffs in disbelief.

“I spent time with coworkers who seemed interested in me.  Was I wrong?”

“No, God, no.  Bond—James—I—” Q stammers, and every inch of his skin stings with insecurity.  What he’s done—he’s fucked a man who isn’t even interested, who will never want—he can feel himself going hot and hazy with nausea.  “Go.”

“You don’t get to be angry about this, Q.  Fucking Christ,” Bond swears, but he’s already half-dressed, slipping his shirt on as he strides to the door.

“Go,” Q repeats.  If his elbows weren’t locked, he’d be facedown in the sheets and wailing like a child; as it is, he doesn’t look at Bond, just hurls the alarm clock from the side of the bed and shouts.  “Go!”

The door shuts.

He spends the next two days at Eve’s, miserable and humiliated.  She drinks with him and holds his hair when he vomits, watches shit movies with him and doesn’t even complain when he throws popcorn at the screen, and holds him late at night when he cries so hard his eyes swell like a frog’s and he wonders if he’s meant always to be alone.  She promises to go with him to buy his first cat and combs her fingers through his hair and shushes him when he starts talking about how much he hates Bond right now, and as she lets him rant he begins to take in the shape of things: how he feels embarrassed but doesn’t know what to miss about Bond, how he can think of a hundred missions but not a single shared lunch.  It’s almost more mortifying to realise that he’s grieving the death of a fantasy than it was to be told it had never been real in the first place, though Eve is mercifully quiet on the subject, just smiles encouragingly when he begins to pull himself together, takes a cup of tea and toast and prods at the edges of the jealous fit he’d had the last time he was over.  It’s scabbed up, the memory, and he surprises himself by picking at the edges to reveal the unblemished, unwounded surface below.  Shallow then, though there’s some invisible bruising.  He’ll get past it.

“You’ve got the patience of a saint, my love,” he murmurs against her temple as he presses a cup of tea into her hands.  “And I’m a little shit.”

“You are,” she agrees.  “Are you feeling better?”

“Much.  It’s upsetting to realise you’ve been a complete twat.”  She hums in agreement and he swats at her playfully.  “I’m going to wash up.  Do you need the loo?”

“Thank god for that,” she says, shaking her head.  “You’re getting a bit whiffy.”

He grins at that.  He’s still a bit heartsore, but she lets him wrap his vaguely smelly self around her, and they nuzzle into the embrace.  “I am sorry,” he tells her.  “Honestly.”

“I know you are.  It’s why I love you.”

“I love you, too.  And I love your shower, which is why I’m going to have my way with it presently.”

“Be safe, then.  Don’t be silly, wrap your willy,” she tells him absently, already sinking into the cup of tea with an indulgent smile.

He hadn’t heard the door; the only way he knows someone else is in the flat when he gets out is when Eve raises her voice: “Well, you could have been a fuck of a lot nicer about it,” she snaps, and he recognises the shape of the low rumble in reply.  He considers for a second sidling down the hall in his towel until he can hear their conversation, but he doesn’t want to meet Bond nude, not with his skinny, scrawny limbs and the still-fading bruises of passion streaked across his chest and shoulders.  He slinks back to Eve’s room and dresses, then sits on the bed and considers hiding until Bond’s gone.  Through the door, he can hear Eve’s strident pitch, can feel the bass rumble of Bond’s reply in his chest like longing.  His hand is on the doorknob before he realises he’s decided to go out there.

“—fucking tells me about it, like it’s my responsibility,” Bond is saying when he reaches the sitting room.  “Like I hadn’t figured out the two of you were playing some sort of game weeks before—”  Eve’s wince cuts him off, but when he turns, Bond meets his eyes unflinchingly.  Challenging, even, and Q has to fight the instinct to let his gaze slide away, submissive.

“You’re right.”  It’s as loud as he can make himself say it, still almost inaudible under the thumping of his heart in his chest, under the thick gurgle of sick in his gut.  It’s this that takes the wind out of Bond’s sails, slows the ranting and the sniping, and Eve looks like she wants to curl herself around him, protective, so he only has to wonder what he looks like right now.  He knows how he feels: young, stupid, hideous.

“Darling—” Eve says, and Bond turns to her.

“Don’t coddle him.  He’s got something to say.”

“You’re right,” Q repeats.  “I’m sorry.  I’ve been an unspeakable arse.  I used you, I expected you to capitulate, to provide sex because I wanted it.  I misled you.”

“Darling, no,” Eve says, but he can’t stop it now, the ugly rush of apology that’s started.

“I misled myself, even when you were honest about your intentions, and I ignored you when you told me what you wanted.  I let myself get lost in the idea of something that was never going to happen, no matter how patient I was, and it wasn’t fair to you.  It wasn’t fair to me, either, to keep waiting.  I wish I hadn’t done it.”  It hurts tremendously to say it, even worse to realise he means it: he’d wish away his time with Bond, the playful pawing at each other and the memory of the salt taste of his skin, even his idiotic attempts to share himself before Bond had explained.  He wants it all gone, wants to go back to pining in silence for the perfect man he’d imagined Bond to be.  It only hurts now.  “I’m sorry.”

Bond is silent.  Q waits—for anything: a smile or a word or even a punch—but nothing comes.  His breath is a bird caught in the cage of his lungs, and he can feel it trying to escape, beating against his ribcage as it contracts.  He tries a deep breath and it comes out more a shaky sigh, and honestly, he’s had enough for today.  Enough castigation, enough of this feeling like he’s been scrubbed down with steel wool.  He tries to smile, feels it waver, and there are eyes on him; he—

In the bathroom mirror, he can see he’s crying.  It surprises him; for an interest in an imaginary person, it feels very real as it dies.  He’s splashing his face when he hears the knock at the door—not Eve.  He stares at the door in mute betrayal as the knob turns.  It’s supposed to be his protection against the world.

And Bond just looks at him, doesn’t speak, just.  Looks.  Watches.

“I’ve apologised, Double-oh Seven.  I don’t know what else there is that I can do for you.”

“You’re upset.”  Bond sounds surprised, just a bit, or confused, which is the same thing from him, really.

Of course I bloody am, Q wants to say, because it fucking hurts to be told you’ve been played—doesn’t it?  He settles for, “We’ve been both of us indiscrete with each other’s feelings.  I’ve apologised and got quite what I deserved in the process, and now I’d like to put it behind us.  If possible,” he adds, with a little nod.  It’s perfectly within Bond’s right to refuse his apology.  His mouth goes dry—Bond hasn’t accepted yet, actually.

Bond seems to be working through something, mulling it over, and he’s bemused by the results, clearly wrongfooted and unsure. It’s an unusual look for him.  “Do you,” he asks slowly, digging for the right words, “like that film?”

Q laughs, but he’s aware that it sounds like a hiccupping sob, and when he turns away, there’s a mirror and Bond’s bright, staggeringly beautiful eyes are on him.  He’s wanked to thoughts of those eyes before, he thinks, and then he’s laughing, more unsteady little sob-sounds until Bond is beginning to look concerned.  It only makes him laugh harder, and he wants to deliver a clever quip, be witty and droll and oh, he’s appalled with himself and how much he still desperately wants to impress Bond.  The realization is stunning and sobering and hurtful, and he calms himself.  “Yes,” he says, because how could Bond think otherwise?  He doesn’t want to know Bond’s opinion of him, this scrawny loser who can’t even pretend to be someone else when he’s seducing someone.  He’s no mastermind, just a lonely boy who made a stupid mistake.  Lonely.  Yes.

The bathroom door is closed, but he knows Eve’s on the other side of it because Eve is the kind of protective nosy parker who’ll pry and then punish a man for being less than fantastic to her friend.  He’s grateful for that.  James leans close, kisses him gently on the top of his head, right in the center of his drying curls.

“I’m sorry, Q,” he says.  And it’s not like the films; he doesn’t cup Q’s face and kiss him slow, doesn’t promise a romance as soon as the curtain drops.  He curls his fingers around the edge of Q’s palm reassuringly, squeezes, and then he lets go.

James leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> A [white party](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Party) is a club event that originated in gay clubs in the 1990s. They're noted for being circuit parties, meaning that they run for 24 hours a day for a length of time (there are circuit parties that have lasted months, even years!), and because all attendees wear only white, or whatever color/theme the party's set.


End file.
